


Inquiry

by camakitsune



Category: Shall We Date?: Obey Me!
Genre: Beelzebub mentioned, Dialogue, Gender Dysphoria, Implied/Referenced Torture, One-Sided Attraction, Other, Referenced violence, Sexual Fantasy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-12
Updated: 2020-08-12
Packaged: 2021-03-06 00:55:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,230
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25854709
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/camakitsune/pseuds/camakitsune
Summary: Bea retreated to the library after an awkward exchange with Beel. A conversation with Satan helps ease his nerves.
Relationships: Beelzebub (Shall We Date?: Obey Me!)/Original Character(s), Satan (Shall We Date?: Obey Me!) & Original Character(s)
Comments: 4
Kudos: 14





	Inquiry

**Author's Note:**

> Another fic featuring my nonbinary oc Bea, who is Beel's contracted chef. This will likely be absorbed into a longer fic in the future, but for now this was just a late submission for Vore Day, so enjoy!
> 
> As always, please mind ALL tags. This fic involves discussion of demons eating humans. I am open to suggestions for additional tags as well.

The charm of a library was difficult for Bea to put into words. The comfort they offered spanned further back into his memory than his cooking, even further than his regimented study. For that, they held a special status as sanctuaries for him.

Bea had messed up. Trying to pull the details of eating humans out of Beel had backfired. His chest was still tight from the way Beel had looked at him when he said he didn't want to have the conversation. That last thing he wasted was to make Beel regret keeping him around.

Tonight he needed an escape from the embarrassment of social faux pas, and the library in the House of Lamentation readily offered it: a wilderness of printed thought, offering escape from Bea’s own self-imposed structure. A wilderness, no matter how meticulously Satan kept the stacks, simply because Bea could never fully explore it in any artificial serial order, but could only grasp a little at a time and hope to see how it related to the larger ecosystem of author, genre, and subject.

Naturally, this became Bea’s second room once he learned it was here. More than a couple of the past month’s nights, he found himself jolted awake from a nap on one of the reading tables, or called down for duty after letting time get away from him.

Downstairs, a fellow explorer entered the library, with enough purpose to tell he was here with a goal. Bea had only caught a peek of Satan’s room once, but what he saw was shelves (and piles) of books. In a way, he envied Satan’s infinite time to study all he could possibly want to know. He certainly used his time to do exactly that, stockpiling books where the shared library fell short.

Satan typically let him be, and Bea did the same when they crossed each other in the library. Still, Satan always made sure to ask Bea what he was studying and give a recommendation for further reading where he could. Bea appreciated the change of pace from being either totally ignored or prodded like an interactive museum exhibit by most of the others.

Of course, there was no reason to expect any deviation from their usual pattern tonight. He found Satan mounting the steps, amicable as always and already carrying his two sought-after books.

“Hey there, Bea,” he greeted at the top, “looking for something?”

“Hey. Not really.” He scanned the old spines of shelved books. “Just browsing, I guess.”

“Is everything alright? You seem down.”

Bea took a deep breath at having to admit to himself the real reason he was in here. “Actually, I kind of made Beel uncomfortable. I asked him some weird stuff, and it’s kind of embarrassing so. Thought I’d come in here and look for something to take my mind of it.”

Satan hummed. "Weird stuff like what?”

And now the intensely icky feeling of recounting it. “Really specific stuff about eating me. And about other humans before me. God it sounds so dumb to ask that in the first place now.”

Satan quirked a brow. “Really now? It’s not any secret that demons eat humans, but I can see how it’d be uncomfortable discussing that with a human you’re contracted with.”

More ick – heavy in Bea’s stomach, a little in his throat. All his fault for missing the obvious signs – Beel blushing red by the third time prodding, the way he refused to look at Bea when he answered. Bea didn’t know it would have been that taboo of a subject between human and demon.

“But more interesting, what an odd topic for you to bring up to him.” He had an amused look on his face. “Humans don’t usually want to hear about that kind of thing. Planning to terminate your pact already?”

“Jeez, no.” Bea folded his arms tightly. “It just seemed like it’d be interesting to hear from him. I don’t know, call it morbid curiosity, I guess.”

“Morbid curiosity, hm? I like the sound of that. What do you want to know?”

Bea didn’t know where to start. Satan caught him in the middle of trying to bury his fascinations in the library wilderness. Rejected thoughts lay in the hole piled up and disordered, still alive, still squirming, but Bea managed to grip something in the dark to present if Satan really wanted to feed it.

“I guess first… do you normally eat humans right after killing them?”

Satan hummed. “If you want to be precise, if a demon wants to eat ‘you,’ he really wants to eat your soul. Most demons can pull it out while you’re still alive, or capture it shortly after the body dies. Of course, human meat is a delicacy too, and it’s surprisingly versatile. But without the soul, it’s like having a pie with no filling.”

Bea had revisitied and re-analyzed the night of being sacrificed to Beel so many times by now, he must have reconstructed it almost perfectly from paltry scraps of memory and from deductions made after the fact.

There had been a gap of noise filled by his own lungs expelling misplaced blood: on one side of that gap, screams, on the other side squelching, tearing, bone cracking. No doubt, Beelzebub made sure all seven of Bea’s would-be murderers were dead before eating them. Did he kill them with brute force or suck their souls like oysters from the shell before moving on to their bodies?

“Anything else?” Satan asked. Bea knew he knew the answer.

“Yeah,” he answered anyway. “I’ve been wondering about this a lot actually.”

“Then how about we get comfortable?”

It was surreal. After spending the last weeks struggling to get anyone to be straightforward with him about the inevitable meal he’d become, this last failure had just about worn him down. Yet here he was, sitting sideways at one of the reading tables, with Satan of all demons for an ask-me-anything session.

If he knew this opportunity was going to come up, he would have made them some tea and cookies in advance.

“So, following up on the last question,” he started, “you mentioned human meat is a delicacy. Do you normally cook it? Or eat it raw?”

“That’s a matter of preference. There’s a thousand ways to prepare human, cooked or raw like a sashimi, but the body quickly loses the flavor of the soul once it’s removed. Some demons prefer the soul flavor with the flesh, so there are plenty of methods of eating humans alive to achieve that as well.”

Bea had considered that latter possibility as well. Now Satan confirmed it. “Like?”

Satan smiled. “First you have to consider what kind of human you’re working with. If your human knows magic to protect themselves, you’ll need to prevent them from making any incantations. The tongue should be the first thing to go, or else you should cast a silencing spell before you even worry about restraining your human. In _my_ opinion, you’re better off cutting out their tongue all the time, because a human who knows magic could be using wards against your spells, and you never know when a human you thought had no magic might surprise you with an incantation. Besides, humans have such nice voices, and I like to hear them.”

“So stop them from speaking first, but let them keep screaming if you’re into that.”

“Should I continue?”

Bea nodded.

“Once you have that out of the way, it’s wide open on whether you want to use tools or your bare hands to pick apart your human, or if you want to restrain them at all. Some demons like to let them struggle and try to escape. Restraining them lets you be more precise if you’re using tools, but you need to be creative to keep them from getting used to it.”

“People get used to that?”

“You’d be surprised how quickly people resign to their fate. There are books written on how to gradually increase the torment for your human so that they stay terrified of what’s coming next through the process.”

“Books,” Bea repeated. What volumes on the shelves around him contained torture tips and opinion notes on effectively maintaining your victim’s terror while you eat them alive? If he found one, would he dare read it?

“How are you holding out over there?”

“I’m good, actually.”

“Hoping to read up on it?” he jabbed at Bea’s curious scanning around the room.

“I’ll hold off.”

“Well, I’m happy to give you recommendations if you change your mind.”

“I think I’m in the mood for some opinions.”

“Shoot.”

“Is there really no enjoying a human without terror?”

“ _I’d_ say no, but I’m a bit of a purist.” He was wearing that aggressively disarming smile again as he said so. “It’s not out of the question for everyone. Plenty of demons believe in killing a human humanely. Those are the ones you find plucking out souls instead of eating them alive in the first place. And then you have more creative ones who’ll eat their humans in the middle of ecstasy if they can manage it.”

That certainly sounded like a very Asmo approach. But what about Beel? Bea had the impression that he was in a hurry that night he was offered as a sacrifice. How would he have done it differently if he had the luxury of making the best meal he could get out of it? He certainly appreciated gourmet food, but Bea couldn’t see him having the patience to prepare seven humans himself. Would he be able to have them prepared?

Now Bea was getting even more curious about the logistics involved here.

But this was enough. Satan had graciously lended enough of his time already, and for that, Bea was grateful. “Thanks for telling me about all of this,” he said. “In some weird way, I guess it’s a little less scary when someone can just tell me the nuts and bolts about it.”

“I can understand that. I have to say, it’s more than a little frustrating to see how willing you are to learn, knowing you’re already taken.”

“Is it? I didn’t mean to make it weird.”

“It’s not weird. It’s a good thing to appreciate the value of knowledge, even when it’s unpleasant. You're trying to familiarize yourself with what a pact means instead of avoiding it. It’s admirable."

Bea noticed the warmth present when he said it. Satan sat back across from him, relaxed, but the air in the library was too dense and too prickly, as if charged by a lightning strike yet to come.

“I can't help wondering how far your curiosity will take you. Is there any knowledge you desperately seek? Something worthy of letting me teach you how to end a pact in Beel’s place?”

Bea chose his words carefully. “I can’t say there is. Anything I'm curious about, it's just curiosity. I don't think there's anything I'm desperate to know like that.”

Satan didn’t answer immediately. Whether he was formulating his own response or giving Bea a chance to second-guess his decision, he couldn’t tell. Bea’s gaze dropped to the table under the intensity of his stare. “I’m happy with the pact I have now.”

“Is that so? Well then, if you have nothing else to ask of me, I’ll be taking my leave.” He gathered the books he had retrieved from the stacks. “If you change your mind,” he added as he stood, “my door is always open.”

“Right,” Bea answered. “Thanks again.”

“Anytime.” Satan gave one last chipper smile before heading off toward the door.

Bea didn’t let himself sigh until Satan was gone. He had no idea how Satan would respond to rejection. Fortunately, his question seemed to be a simple inquiry for interest. If Bea thought coming to the library would distract him from the embarrassment of weirding Beel out, he had gotten what he came for. At this point, the dance between him and his contracted demon was a welcome topic to return to.

He only half-jokingly wondered if he could do a trial of letting Beel eat him and decide if he wanted to commit to Beel and Satan. Just find some way to let Beel eat the parts he didn’t want anyway. He wouldn’t miss some old uterus, that was for sure.

As for whether it was a joke or something else when he imagined himself on Beel’s lap, pressing his breasts to his demon’s face in offering – did it really matter? He wouldn't miss them either. Rather, it left him just a little heated to imagine Beel looking up at him, cute as a puppy, the same way he does when hoping to steal bites of a still-cooking meal. His hands would be strong enough to hold around Bea's ribs and keep him in place as blood oozed up around his mouth. Beel could have the spare parts and Bea would simply thank him.

Riding that train of thought any further was an exercise for later. Would he ever manage to get Beel to talk about it as frankly as Satan had? There were still demon customs he didn't understand. The social rules themselves, however, weren't exactly what he was interested in. He simply wanted to reach that level of openness with his contracted demon someday.


End file.
